Author: Glenn

The Historical Juggling Props museum began when David Cain got his hands on a set of Van Wyck clubs. This re-ignited an old dream of his to build a collection of juggling props with historic value that could be displayed as an exhibit at conventions and festivals.

Since then David has realized his dream by putting together a formidable collection of “innovative and rare clubs,” “vintage mass marketed props,” “world record props,” and collections from classic performers. Some of our favorite items in the collection are the various Van Wyck clubs, the collection of Francis Brunn props, and the club “broken in anger” by Jason Garfield.

This museum is a great treasure for the Juggling Subculture. We appreciate David’s hard work in collecting, cultivating and displaying the props that tell the story of juggling history.

We recently came across this video of Daniel Rosen from one of his many performances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. It is a short routine but Daniel does a good job of creating a character and presenting a well put-together presentation of a few classic skills.

Here is another performance of Daniel’s on The Tonight Show from the same era. If you watch closely I think you can see him grab the fire end of his torch! He plays it off pretty well. The audience doesn’t seem to notice at all.

Joe Salter likes to challenge himself. Recently this means joggling a marathon backwards. Before that it was juggling his way through a triathlon. That’s right–running, swimming, and biking while Juggling!

We enjoyed this video of him training for his triathlon. It is fun to see him working through the specific challenges he’ll face in the race like running into the water and switching to swimming and juggling (swuggling? Is this a thing?).

We always knew that the guys at RenegadesignLab were doing something awesome.

But we never really new what it was or why exactly they were doing it.

Then we watched Jay Gilligan’s talk at TedxHelsinki.

We highly recommend anyone who has ever juggled a ball, a ring, or a club take the 26 minutes to watch this video.

Here is the link:

Jay smartly questions how the shapes and sizes of classic juggling props became universally accepted. “Why is this ring like this? Why is it this shape, this thickness, this weight, this material?”

The answers lead to profound and challenging conclusions about the limitless possibilities of the design of juggling props and their interpretive manipulation. From there he and his friends took a giant step through the looking glass and found unexpected creatures on the other side. Props like a club with a hole through the middle; two rings melded together like a figure 8; clubs with flat tops; clubs with scooped out tops; ring like things that are square or triangular instead of round; long sticks with hooks on one side. . . and you can tell that this is only the beginning.

After watching Jay’s talk the world of juggling just seems bigger and more beautiful to us–and makes us want to get a saw and a hot glue gun and see what we can come up with!

Beautiful sights and some creative editing not only inspired us to put Iceland on our travel wish list but also to imagine the other ways a GoPro camera could capture unique perspectives of the Juggling Subculture.

Every audience is different. As a performer you need to figure out the uniqueness of your audience, meet them where they are, and from there take them with you on a journey of discovery and entertainment.

Here’s what that looks like when your audience is a 15-month-old:

Our hats off to the unnamed juggler who isn’t above juggling for a “smaller” audience!

The awesome “Juggling with John” hoodie. Looks like comfy-cozy way to advertise the biz!

The unnamed cohorts. They’re definitely in it to win it, and they’re juggling fire too! You may not have gotten any shout-outs, but we see you back there fellas!

The reminder of how fun it was to learn to juggle fire . . . And how much it freaked out our parents! We remember being in the backyard, dad poised with a trickling garden hose and mom barking safety reminders, looking through a window from inside the kitchen. What a rush. Your parents’ reaction is confirmation that the people on the street are going to love it!